“Each team was issued a challenge proposed by a local urban leader. At the event, the creative teams will present their solutions to their assigned challenge, and the urban leaders will join them onstage for a brief Q&A with GOOD Ideas for Cities editor Alissa Walker.” Teams included international talent from Wieden + Kennedy and Ziba Design, as well as local groups Sincerely Interested, THINK.urban, ADX, and the Official Manufacturing Company, all tackling some pressing (and not so pressing) urban ideas.

The event was held at Ziba’s beautiful new HQ building in the Pearl District, and the sold-out event had some great people and conversations. As you can see the packed house (including Mayor Sam Adams) is checking out Alissa from GOOD’s intro, and had some great energy for the various groups.

My evolving side project THINK.urban, under development as a non-profit with fellow PSU Grad Students Allison Duncan and Katrina Johnston, was one of the teams, as mentioned above. We’ve been slamming away on ideas for six weeks, and presented our ideas for world-class bike infrastructure, working from a challenge from Bikeportland.org‘s Jonathan Maus).

“CHALLENGE (from BikePortland.org editor Jonathan Maus): How can we create a major new bikeway that helps make bicycling as visible, safe, convenient, and pleasant for as many people as possible?

IDEAS (from PSU grad student nonprofit THINK.Urban): Take a cue from Europe and build two-way cycletracks on Portland’s biggest streets. The two-way lanes would be separated from cars on streets like Sandy, Broadway, and Hawthorne, by a grassy median. “Prioritize bikes on the same level as cars. People are tired of looking at Europe. We want to see these things here now.”

We were really happy with the ideas that were developed, honored to be in such great company, and looking forward to seeing this new bike infrastructure take root. More on the ideas will be posted at THINK.urban, and I’ll link them back here when they do.

The challenges and teams can be found at the GOOD website for Ideas for Cities Portland. They are going to be following up with videos of the solutions and more info in the coming weeks – so check it out, there were some ‘good ideas’ for sure.